Popstars Reunited: Hear’Say and Liberty X Bring 25 Years of Nostalgia to Cardiff
IF you remember rushing home to watch Popstars, buying Pure and Simple on CD single or trying to copy the choreography from Just a Little, there is a fair chance this one will make you feel your age.
Hear’Say and Liberty X are going back on the road together in 2027, marking 25 years since the television series that created them helped change the face of British pop.
And Cardiff is on the tour.
Popstars: The Originals arrives at Utilita Arena Cardiff on Wednesday, April 28, 2027, bringing the two groups together on the same stage for the first time.
Doors are currently listed for 6.30pm. Tickets go on general sale at 9am on Friday, October 16, with presales beginning earlier in the week.
For anyone who lived through the early 2000s, the story needs little introduction.
Popstars followed thousands of hopeful singers auditioning for places in a new pop group.
Eventually five were chosen.
Kym Marsh, Suzanne Shaw, Danny Foster, Myleene Klass and Cardiff-born Noel Sullivan became Hear’Say.
The five finalists who missed out — Michelle Heaton, Jessica Taylor, Kelli Young, Kevin Simm and Tony Lundon — responded by forming their own group, initially called Liberty and later Liberty X.
A quarter of a century later, both groups are heading back into arenas together.
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Hear’Say make an extraordinary entrance
The scale of Hear’Say’s initial success can easily be forgotten.
Their debut single Pure and Simple sold around 550,000 copies in its first week, becoming the fastest-selling debut single in UK chart history at the time.
It went straight to Number One and remained there for three weeks.
Follow-up The Way to Your Love also topped the singles chart, while debut album Popstars went to Number One as well.
For a brief period in 2001, Hear’Say were everywhere.
Their success was intense but short-lived.
The original line-up began to change later that year, and by 2002 the group had split.
Yet the songs — and perhaps even more importantly the television phenomenon surrounding them — left a lasting mark on British pop culture.
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Liberty X write their own ending
The story of Liberty X was rather different.
Being the five people who had not been chosen for Hear’Say could easily have marked the end of their Popstars adventure.
Instead, it became the beginning.
Their first single Thinking It Over reached the UK Top Five, and in 2002 came the song most associated with the group: Just a Little.
It reached Number One and helped establish Liberty X as a successful act in their own right.
Over their career they achieved eight UK Top 10 singles, including Got to Have Your Love, Being Nobody, Song 4 Lovers and A Night to Remember.
There is therefore something rather satisfying about the two groups now sharing a tour.
Twenty-five years ago they represented the winners and runners-up of a television competition.
In 2027, they will simply be two acts celebrating the same extraordinary chapter in British pop.
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Who is returning?
Hear’Say will reunite with Kym Marsh, Suzanne Shaw, Danny Foster and Noel Sullivan.
Myleene Klass is not taking part in the tour.
Liberty X, meanwhile, return with their complete original line-up of Michelle Heaton, Jessica Taylor, Kelli Young, Kevin Simm and Tony Lundon.
The tour begins in Dublin on April 17 before travelling around major arenas across the UK and Ireland.
Organisers say the shows will feature the hits associated with both groups, alongside a large-scale production designed to recreate some of the energy and nostalgia of the original Popstars era.
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A Cardiff homecoming for Noel Sullivan
The Cardiff date has an extra Welsh connection.
Noel Sullivan was born in Cardiff and was working as a waiter before his Popstars audition changed his life.
His subsequent career has taken him well beyond Hear’Say.
Sullivan moved into musical theatre and has built an extensive stage career, appearing in major productions including Grease, Rock of Ages, We Will Rock You and School of Rock.
So when Hear’Say walk onto the stage at Utilita Arena next April, one member at least will be enjoying something of a homecoming.
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The programme that changed television
It is easy now to take television-created pop groups for granted.
But Popstars arrived before Pop Idol, The X Factor and the many talent formats that followed.
Its enormous success demonstrated the appetite for watching performers progress from open auditions to national fame — and helped establish a formula that would dominate Saturday-night television for years.
The tour promoters argue that Hear’Say and Liberty X helped pave the way for later television-created acts including Girls Aloud, One Direction, Little Mix and JLS.
Whether audiences watched for the music, the personalities or simply the drama of the competition, millions followed the story.
And now many of those viewers will have the chance to revisit it.
Twenty-five years ago, viewers were being asked which five singers should become pop stars.
The answer turned out to be slightly more complicated than expected.
Hear’Say got the official victory.
Liberty X proved that losing the competition did not necessarily mean losing the career.
And next April, Cardiff gets both of them.
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Did Ewe Know?
When Pure and Simple went straight to Number One in 2001, Hear’Say achieved something even more extraordinary a few weeks later: their debut album Popstars also entered at Number One, giving the newly created group a simultaneous UK singles-and-albums chart double.